1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a process for preparing pancreatic elastase in a high yield.
In the pancreas of a mammalian animal, elastase is present in the form of a precursor of elastase. Accordingly, in general, elastase is obtained from the pancreas by activating this elastase precursor to convert it to elastase and purifying the activated product.
2. Description of Prior Arts
As the conventional process for the preparation of pancreatic elastase, there are known various processes, for example, the process disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 21557/75 and the Lewis process [The Journal of Biological Chemistry, 222, page 705 (1956)]. In all of these conventional processes, finely cut fresh pancreas which has been activated by autolysis under heating or a dry product of such activated pancreas commercially available as "pancreatin" is used as the starting material. In these known processes, however, activation of the elastase precursor is not sufficiently performed and hence, the yield of elastase is not good.